Category Archives: landscape

Another from Ruth Catlow

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as i looked up
travel images unseen (2011, 156MB, 6:01 min)

‘5 video clips taken on a simple video camera, through a window on a coach to the
plane from Istanbul and arriving in London by train. Selected by and stitched, unseen
by the creator who will never watch the video, ever.’

The gentlest conceptualism & quite, quite lovely too.
There’s something about knowing the premise that leaves one
very open – one could say innoculates one – to its formal consequences –
here a looseness which somehow gently stretches time, makes it grainier
but conversely sharpens our attention, perhaps to make up for the
maker’s own vow of abstention.
One more in the series to come.

Ruth Catlow – As I Looked Up…

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as i looked up
As I Looked Up (2011, 32MB, 2:23 min)
A co-director of the formidable Furtherfield, Ruth Catlow charms
and something more – something to do with the urgency and vulnerability
of performance and the importance of memory, of a sense of place – in this
fragile & lovely elaboration of an Ivor Cutler song.
Things its difficult to put your finger on but which go right to our core;
pointing to – literally singing – those things being in the ‘artist’ job description…

First of three. Two more pieces, just as delicate, just as necessary, to come.

2 from Jack Ryan

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I Fell for You (2011, 216MB, 1:00 min)

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Threshold (2011, 86MB, 3:29 min)

I Fell For You:

‘My early artistic ideas came from a 3-year experience as
a commercial fisherman in Alaska. At the time, my work
centered on ideas consistent with the locale: hermetic
fabulousness, escape, odyssey, and the sublime.
Todayperversities of the sublime continue to influence the
way I shape projects. A consensual explanation of the
contemporary sublime would acknowledge that there are
thresholds of human perception and a desire to explore these
thresholds connecting ourselves to a greater environment of
understanding and awareness. At the root of my work is
an interest in human experience.’

Threshold:

‘Borrowing from fluxus films Threshold is filmed in Iceland
and the Oregon Coast and made for a project with The
Archer Gallery.
The video takes place where land meets sea, where the
landscape moves from vertical to horizontal, and
associatively between life (verticality) and death (horizontality)’

I’m guessing the club formed by the intersection of the sets of
experimental video makers and of former commercial fishermen
in Alaska is a fairly exclusive one.
Jack Ryan upholds its honor in these two exhilarating
(but totally uningratiating, no puppy-dog-eyes here) pieces.
I especially love “I fell…”.
Very bracing.

Delpha Hudson – A Walk with Jane Austen

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A Walk with Jane Austen (1999, 144MB, 12:20 min)

‘the work is about exploring the veracity of history and of time,
and its constructs (in this case especially the notion of
“bodice-ripping” romance genres).
Playing with text and in-authenticity, the intention was to engage
an audience with notions of historical construction of women;
their facts and fictions, and the possibility of re-visioning histories.
– Delpha Hudson

Engaging hybrid of site specific performance and movie making,
the somewhat improvisatory quality lending it all a pleasantly
languid & unhurried air.
At the very end the sun joins in to striking effect & I love the rogue
arm at our right as the spectators leave.
Hudson is a charismatic & commanding performer –
we’ll have another of her performance pieces here in the Autumn.

Super Dog

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Super Dog (2011, 20MB, 1:58 min)

You might remember that Pink Tall Bike brought
to you here previously by Mike Stoddart.
Now that gentle and slightly skewed sensibility*
brings you Super Dog.

*Not weird enough to qualify for surreal exactly,
but there is something about the way he makes them
that is, enough to notice (or to feel in one’s bones),
delightfully loopy & off kilter…

Regina Célia Pinto –Andante Grazioso

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Andante Grazioso (2011, 26MB, 3:47 min)

Gosto muito do trabalho de Regina Pinto, simples e elegante
na superfície, ele toca o coração (e acopla a mente) e,
aparentemente, é isso que nos prende.
Esta profundidade lúcida, a embalagem luminosa do diário,
não é conseguida sem trabalho, mas Regina é demasiado
cuidadosa e modesta (no comportamento, não na ambição)
mas, visivelmente, está fazendo algo difícil, e este fato é,
ele próprio, parte de sua arte. Encantador!

Like so much of Regina Célia Pinto’s work, simple and elegant
on the surface, this touches the heart (and engages the mind)
seemingly without effort.
Of course ‘seemingly’ is the catch. This lucid depth, the luminous
encapsulation of the everyday, is not achieved without labour,
but Regina is too careful and modest (in demeanour, not ambition) an
artist to make heavy weather of it, and this fact is itself part of her art.
Lovely!

Ruth Catlow – Landscape

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Landscape (2011, 114MB, 3:12 min)

Ravishing piece of work from my friend and colleague Ruth Catlow
who is also co-director of the indispensible Furtherfield.org

We’ve been talking a lot amongst ourselves and with our students about
continuities across art history and about hybrid techniques which
meld both the ancient and the newest.
Filmed in the New Forest, this piece (apart from its great beauty)
is an exemplar of this approach and pathbreaking in its way.
(More so than much which, dull-eyed, shouts and waves the latest thing
from the rooftops.)
The oldest kind of mark making, delicately but robustly realised,
captured on a tiny portable video camera in a semi-performative
way and then networked…
Beautiful and nourishing both.